Saturday, April 09, 2016

Hillary strokes her war hawk

From Democracy Now! today:AMYGOODMAN:
Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders says Hillary Clinton,
among other things, is not qualified simply because she voted for the
Iraq War. Colonel Bacevich?

ANDREWBACEVICH:
Well, I don’t know that I would judge somebody’s qualifications simply
on one particular vote, but I have to agree with the basic argument that
Senator Sanders is making, that Secretary Clinton is an unreconstructed
hawk. Now, in terms of the rhetoric, she comes across as more reasoned
than the Republican opposition, but the fact of the matter is, if we
elect her to be our next commander-in-chief, we are voting for the
continuation of the status quo with regard to U.S. national
security policy, and specifically U.S. national security policy in the
Greater Middle East. So, for people for whom that is an important issue,
who want to see change in U.S. policy, she’s not going to be the
vehicle for change.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to
ask you—you’re a veteran of Vietnam. After Vietnam, the United States
got rid of its citizen or volunteer—its drafting of soldiers into the
military, and created a volunteer army. You’ve been a critic of that.
Why?

ANDREWBACEVICH:
Well, I think that one of the unintended consequences of ending the
draft, creating a professional military, was to create a gap between the
military and society. Now, we don’t acknowledge that gap. Matter of
fact, we deny the existence of that gap by all of the rhetorical
tributes that are paid to the troops and the obligation that we all have
to, quote-unquote, "support the troops." The reality, I think, is that
when it really comes down to it, the American people don’t pay much
attention to how the troops are being used. And because they’re not
paying attention, the troops have been subjected to abuse. That is to
say, they’ve been sent to fight wars that are unnecessary. The wars have
been mismanaged. The wars go on far longer than they ought to. And we
respond by letting people in uniform be the first to board airplanes.
And I think, frankly, that that is disgraceful and that it actually
ought to be one of the things that gets discussed in a presidential
campaign, but tends not to, sadly.

AMYGOODMAN:
And finally, what do you want these presidential candidates to say
to—well, we’ve introduced you as a retired colonel, as a Vietnam War
veteran, as a professor emeritus, but you’re also a dad, and you lost
your son in Iraq in 2007, like so many parents in this country, also
like so many Iraqis who lost family members. What do you want these
presidential candidates—what do you want to hear from them? What do you
want them to say to you?

ANDREWBACEVICH:
What they ought to say to us, not simply to me because of my personal
circumstances—what they ought to say is: "I understand that we, as a
nation, have been engaged in this war for going on four decades now, and
I have learned something from that experience. I have taken on board
what the United States tried to do militarily and what it actually ended
up doing and what the consequence is that resulted. And here’s what
I’ve learned, and here’s how I’m going to ensure, if you elect me
commander-in-chief, that we will behave in ways that are wiser and more
prudent and more enlightened in the future." In other words, they have
to look beyond simply the question of how many more bombs are we going
to drop on ISIS. That is a secondary consideration. They have to have some appreciation of the history, that I try to lay out in this book.

Hillary offers only war and more war.

If you think the US is in a state of eternal war already, it's nothing compared to what we could see under a President Hillary.

Friday, April 8, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the denial
regarding the Iraq War gets some attention, a member of the US Congress
lives in his own little special world, war hawk Hillary gets called out
for big money campaign corruption, and much more.

Do you remember November 4, 2012?

Cynthia M. Allen does, specifically she remembers what US President
Barack Obama said that day: "I said I'd end the war in Iraq. I ended
it."

At THE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM, Allen writes:On March 19, Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin, 27, was killed during an Islamic State-launched rocket attack in Iraq. According to reports,
Cardin, of California, and several other members of his unit came under
enemy rocket fire at a base in Makhmour, southeast of the Islamic
State-controlled city of Mosul, very near the front line. He was the second U.S. troop to die in combat in the current campaign.Competing
for news coverage with what is probably the most theatrical campaign
season in recent memory, the young Marine’s death garnered a paltry
amount of media attention. It should have earned more. It was a reminder of the battle that continues in the Middle East, where U.S. troops are still at risk. It
was also a stark admonition that more than four years after the last
convoy of U.S. soldiers departed from Iraq and years after President
Barack Obama repeatedly credited himself with “ending” the war, the U.S.
— quite predictably — is back in Iraq in a big way.

The U.S. has pushed current Iraqi Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi to undertake political reforms to allow for more Sunni autonomy
and representation, but progress has been slow.

Ryan said he did see some signs of reform.

"The
prime minister wanted to completely retool his Cabinet because there
was a huge protest outside of the compound — Sunni-led — and he is
offering now to retool his Cabinet," Ryan said.

"The
fact that he said he was going to redo his Cabinet, I think, was a
fairly good sign that he's opening up and understanding that the Sunnis
really have to have buy-in, and these chiefs and these Sunni leaders
have to have buy-in," he said.

What?

The Sunni-led protest?

Does he mean the rallies (of support) Moqtada al-Sadr led outside the Green Zone?

That would be Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada.

He called on his (Shi'ite) followers to rally in support of 'reforming' the Cabinet.

As for the redoing of the Cabinet, Sunni leaders generally have objected
to this and see it as a way to weaken their voice -- the voices of all
minorities in Iraq.

He wants "to completely retool his Cabinet because there was a huge protest outside of the compound -- Sunni led"?

Abadi
has been accused of undermining democracy and “leading a coup” against
Iraq’s power-sharing political structure that has been in place since
2003, which guarantees a certain number of political positions to the
country’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs.But
Abadi told Middle East Eye in a phone interview that rival political
blocs had not responded to his request for them to nominate their
preferred independent candidates for cabinet posts last month.He
also said that the call for an independent cabinet had come from
Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shia cleric who last week threatened to
raid Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone unless his demands for political reform were met.[. . .]“It
was Sadr who demanded a government of technocrats, in which everyone is
independent except for the prime minister. It was not my demand.”

So where in the world is US House Rep Tim Ryan getting the ridiculous
idea that Haider al-Abadi's doing anything about this because of Sunnis?

Meanwhile the bombing of Iraq continues. The US Defense Dept announced Thursday:

Strikes in IraqRocket artillery and attack, fighter, and remotely piloted
aircraft conducted 19 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with Iraq’s
government:-- Near Baghdadi, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed an ISIL fighting position and a cache of ISIL improvised
bombs.-- Near Rutbah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.-- Near Habbaniyah, a strike destroyed two ISIL-used bridges.-- Near Hit, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed 10 ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL front end loader, an ISIL
supply cache and an ISIL vehicle bomb and denied ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Kirkuk, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical
units and destroyed an ISIL supply cache, three ISIL assembly areas and
an ISIL fighting position.-- Near Kisik, a strike destroyed an ISIL tunnel system.-- Near Mosul, five strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical
units and destroyed an ISIL tunnel system, an ISIL assembly area, an
ISIL fighting position and an ISIL vehicle.-- Near Qayyarah, a strike destroyed eight ISIL fighting positions.-- Near Sinjar, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed two ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL fighting
position.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.

Meanwhile, as a member of the US Senate, she helped bring you the Iraq
War. As President of the United States, she'd bring you so much more
destruction. Yes, in the United States War Hawk and pig at the trough
Hillary Clinton continues to vie for the Democratic Party's presidential
nomination against Senator Bernie Sanders.

Thursday, former US President Bill Clinton attempted to help his wife.
In doing so, he actually made the 2008 charges that he was racist seem
true.

Indeed, a Center for Public Integrity
investigation reveals that Clinton’s own election efforts are largely
immune from her reformist platform. While Clinton rails against
“unaccountable money" that is “corrupting our political system,”
corporations, unions and nonprofits bankrolled by unknown donors have
already poured millions of dollars into a network of Clinton-boosting
political organizations. That’s on top of the tens of millions an elite
club of Democratic megadonors, including billionaires George Soros and
Haim Saban, have contributed.

Far from denouncing their support, Clinton has embraced it, personally wooing potential super PAC donors and dispatching former President Bill Clinton and campaign manager John Podesta on similar missions.Several of the big-money groups crucial to the Clinton-for-president effort are led or advised by one man, Clinton scourge-turned-disciple
David Brock, who’s also seized control of — and defanged, former
staffers say — a prominent, nonpartisan watchdog group that helped lay groundwork for what’s become the Clinton email server scandal.
Each of the groups plays a specific role, from advertising to
opposition research, in bolstering the Hillary for America campaign
committee Clinton herself leads.Clinton’s campaign argues it “cannot afford to unilaterally disarm”
and quit the big-money game. That, they say, is because powerful
conservative interests, most notably the secretive outfits
backed by billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch, plan to support
the Republican presidential nominee with hundreds of millions of
dollars. Republican front-runner Donald Trump, himself a billionaire, is burning his own wealth as campaign fuel.“When she is elected president, Hillary Clinton will make it a
priority to restore a government of, by and for the people,” spokesman
Josh Schwerin told the Center for Public Integrity.Not satisfactory, say some prominent liberals, whose reactions range from underwhelmed to apoplectic.They cite Bernie Sanders as proof a Democratic presidential candidate can contend in elections mostly on the strength of small-dollar donations — and without cultivating support from super PACs and billionaires.Clinton’s
supposedly reform-minded campaign, they continue, has instead
tolerated, if not encouraged, a Democratic operation akin to what the
Koch brothers have wrought.

“It’d be like tobacco companies coming out and saying they wanted to
fight against lung cancer,” said Dylan Ratigan, the former MSNBC
television host and author of New York Times bestseller Greedy Bastards,
who hasn’t yet endorsed a presidential candidate. “In a way, the Koch
brothers have more credibility than Clinton on election money issues —
they’re at least upfront about how they want to use money to buy
politics.”